Owl and the Japanese Circus
Page 28
He turned to leave the cafe, newspaper in hand, looking more troubled than when we’d arrived.
“Good to know my effect on people is consistent,” I whispered to Nadya.
She shot me a dirty look and took three steps after him. “One more thing,” Nadya said, then stopped dead in her tracks as he turned and arched a tattooed eyebrow. It did not convey, Please, continue talking.
I tripped over my chair as I scrambled to catch up to her. When I did, I watched as her fantasy version of Oricho collided with the more accurate “only slightly less scary than the other monsters” Oricho.
She swallowed hard before continuing.
“There—there’s a leak, from in here. That’s how Sabine knows where Owl is,” she said, choosing her phrasing carefully.
He turned his serious stare on her, the one that got me to shut up. “I do not appreciate the implication that one of my trusted staff is a traitor to myself or Mr. Kurosawa. Such accusations have serious consequences. Are you prepared to suffer the consequences should you be wrong?”
The color drained out of Nadya’s face, her confidence shaken by his tone. I was just about ready to turn and run. For someone who’d been contemplating hitting on a monster . . . Nadya might know her monsters better than anyone else, but she didn’t know them like I did.
“For Christ’s sake, stop shaking,” I whispered.
She glared at me, but it pushed her past her fear. She cleared her throat and shook her head. “I’m certain.”
I couldn’t bear watching Nadya negotiate with a supernatural. She didn’t have my experience, or my lack of common sense. I stepped in.
“Oricho, we’re positive. Sabine has to be getting inside information from here. There’s no other way she could be following me so closely.”
He placed me in his sights instead of Nadya. She let out a breath she’d been holding.
“You suspect Lady Siyu,” he said.
I shrugged. “As we like to say, if the shoe fits . . .”
“I am aware that you do not communicate well with Lady Siyu. However, personal grudge matches are not justification for suspicion.”
“I agree, and if it was just her winning personality, we wouldn’t have brought it up, but they’ve known what I’m doing before I do.”
“Lady Siyu is Mr. Kurosawa’s most trusted advisor, more so than I.” He glanced at Nadya. “It is more likely an infiltration on your end.”
“Sure, if it was just Bali, but they knew I was at the casino and Nuroshi’s office. Only you guys knew I was heading to see Nuroshi; Sabine was waiting for me. And now she just happens to have her flunkies in LA? The only thing that surprised them was Rynn. Did Lady Siyu know about that?”
Oricho didn’t take his stare off me, but the righteous anger dissipated. After a moment, he looked out the garden window and said, “No. She was not apprised of Rynn. She was otherwise occupied.”
I shook my head. “Either we can add mind reader to Sabine’s repertoire, or you and Mr. Kurosawa have a leak. I can’t prove it’s Lady Siyu, but I think it warrants a look.”
Oricho narrowed his eyes, his jaw drawn tight. He gave me curt nod and left.
Nadya let out another breath and slumped into a chair. “How often do they do that?” she said. I could see that sweat had started to accumulate on her lip.
“Switch from normal to bipolar at warp speed? Praise your ingenuity, then threaten to kill you? Try all the time. It’s when they don’t I start to worry. You done with your supernatural crush?”
She nodded and we headed upstairs to get ready for Berkeley. When we got into the elevator, Nadya asked, “Do you think he’ll do anything about Lady Siyu?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t completely unsympathetic to Oricho having his superior supernatural ideals burst, but it was his job to grow a pair and deal with Lady Siyu. “If I didn’t, there’d be nothing we could do about it anyways. Let’s get that scroll, translate it, and get the hell out of here.”
16
BREAKING AND ENTERING
2:30 p.m., hippie coffee shop outside Berkeley
I hate B&E’s, especially museums. It’s a far cry from excavating out of dig sites. If it’s already in a museum, I usually tell people to hire a thief. It’s cheaper.
And no, they’re not the same thing; I’m an archaeologist who likes cats, not a cat burglar who likes old stuff. I spent five years in grad school slaving away on dig sites, only to get thrown under the bus when the department needed a good scapegoat. Three months before I was supposed to graduate. Excuse me if I don’t have a moral dilemma making a profit from under their noses.
I sighed. I may not like B&E’s, but I’ll do them in a pinch if I have to. “Thanks, keep the change,” I said, and slid six bucks across the counter to the forty-something hippie manning the cash register. I retrieved the two coffees: mocha for Nadya and a latte with an extra shot of espresso for me. I held the cups above my shoulders and pushed through the sea of student backpacks to Nadya. We’d camped out at a round table right in front of the coffee shop’s large, open storefront window. Not only did we have a panoramic view of the main campus entrance and museum, but Captain, tucked underneath my chair, would also smell any vampires in range.
I slid back into the wooden chair, spilling some of the coffee on the table as the uneven legs rocked under my weight. Captain complained but curled back up around my feet. I passed Nadya the mocha, garnering dirty looks from a group of students sitting beside us. One of them cleared his throat until I made eye contact with him.
“What’s their problem?” Nadya said.
“Apparently we’re in their seats.” I shrugged at the guy and took a slow sip of my latte. The coffee burned my mouth, but I swallowed anyways. I needed the caffeine more than my comfort right now.
I checked my watch again. 2:30 p.m. Rynn’s plane should have landed an hour and a half ago—where the hell was he? The museum would be closing at 4:00. I craned my head around the windowpane to glance towards the subway station.
“Staring down the sidewalk isn’t going to make him show up any faster,” Nadya said casually. “Neither is calling him,” she added as I pressed redial for the third time.
“Come on, Rynn, pick up,” I said after the third ring passed.
Rynn picked up. All I heard was the dull roar of a crowd. “What possessed you to tell the dragon to fuck off?” he said.
I winced. I recognized the sharp accent that Rynn let slip when he was pissed. “Shit, Oricho told you about that?”
“It came up in conversation. What were you thinking?”
That I’d get a translation, for starters. “It’s a dragon. Nothing makes a supernatural feel big and strong like beating the shit out of a human—”
“Then for God’s sake, stop volunteering!”
I crinkled my nose. There was a sliver of wisdom in there I should probably take. “Besides, Oricho handled it—he’s not half bad for one of them.”
I took another sip of coffee and glanced out the window at the museum. “Can we talk about this later? After I get the scroll—”
I trailed off as Captain lifted his head and gave a halfhearted growl under my chair. “Rynn, just a sec,” I said, and put him on hold before he could answer.
I scanned the courtyard, my heart rate increasing. My chair rocked back as someone placed their hands on either side.
“Excuse me?” a guy said in my ear.
I jumped, and my pulse spiked two dozen more BPMs as I turned to see who it was. I frowned. It was the student who’d been glaring at us when we’d sat back down. He was way too close for comfort.
“Hey, do you guys think you could move to a smaller table and let us have the extra seats?” he said, exuding thinly veiled contempt as he invaded my personal space.
My temper flared. I hate patronizing politeness. “Get lost, we need the table,” I said, and pushed one of three extra chairs towards him.
He flipped a strand of brown hair out of his face. “That’s not
what I meant—”
Nadya pushed the other two empty chairs towards him. “Take them and get lost.”
He headed back to his friends and exchanged words with them, glaring and nodding back at me. I got a good look at their clothes—H&M—then snorted; they weren’t even real hippies. I finished surveilling outside and put Rynn back on.
“How far away are you now? The museum is closing at four, and the natives are getting restless.”
“I just got off the plane, I’m at least an hour away—”
Goddamn it, the plane had been delayed. Again. “We don’t have an hour—”
“Listen to me, I’m getting in a taxi now. Wait for me.”
Waiting another hour in the coffee shop was about the last thing I wanted to do. “Fine, but you better be on your way now. They’ll stop letting people in, and we’ll . . .”
Captain growled and stood up with a start. He hopped up on the windowsill and stuck his nose into the breeze. His ears pointed forward, and his lips curled up as he growled deeper.
Shit. I scanned the students for vampires and thralls and caught sight of Red standing under the shade trees that lined the pathway, with a woman in a black hoodie, the hood pulled far down over her face. I waited until she turned to the side. Bindi. They were arguing, or, more precisely, Bindi was yelling at Red and nodding towards the museum.
I dropped my binder as I scrambled out of the chair and pulled Captain off the windowsill. I turned my face away from the window on the off chance they were looking for me. Nadya lifted her head from her laptop and raised an eyebrow. I nodded towards Marie’s thralls and mouthed, “Vampire.” She swore under her breath and started gathering up her papers.
“Owl?” Rynn said. “What’s going on?”
Damn it, I’d almost forgotten he was still on the phone.
“You really aren’t going to like this. Nadya and I need to get in there. Now. The psycho Bobbsey Twins just showed up. Meet us inside when you get here. We’ll be careful.” I shoved Captain into his carrier with minimal resistance.
“Wait for me. Getting the scroll is not worth your life,” Rynn said.
I bit my lower lip. I wasn’t crazy about it either, but what choice did I have? “I don’t have a lot of options here. If I wait, they’ll get the scroll first, and who knows what Marie will do with it?” I said, and hung up on him. I didn’t feel good about blowing Rynn off, but what choice did I have?
We stepped out onto the sidewalk and into a crowd of students getting out of class. I hazarded a glance over towards where I’d seen Bindi and Red . . .
And they’d gotten closer to the museum entrance. I jabbed Nadya with my elbow. “They’re on their way in—the redhead and the blond surfer chick in pink shorts and black hoodie. We need to get into that exhibit now.” I picked up Captain’s carrier and started after them. If I could just get past them and into the exhibit . . .
“Alix!” Nadya grabbed my arm before I could step out from under the coffee shop awning. She spun me so that I was facing the store window. “We need a plan.”
In the window’s reflection I watched them waltz right in, hand in hand. I squeezed my eyes shut and resisted the urge to bang my head against the glass. I should have headed in hours ago; why the hell had I listened to Oricho? I was the professional antiquities thief for Christ’s sake, not him. “We don’t have time for a plan—they’re already inside. Stay here. I’ll try to go in the back and beat them to the exhibit,” I said.
“This is exactly why we need a plan. You can’t steamroll through every job and expect to come out in one piece. Besides,” she said, and nodded at Captain’s carrier, “you won’t be able to sneak up on them with him.”
She had a point. He’d reduced his growl to a low rumble now that the psycho dynamic duo had slipped inside the museum, but he wasn’t exactly inconspicuous . . . still, Nadya hadn’t seen these two at work. My stomach churned thinking about it.
“Nadya, these two are a new shade of crazy—especially Bindi. They’ll go straight for the exhibit and not give a flying rat’s ass who they hurt. Yeah, a plan would be real nice, but do you really want to leave them in there? With people?”
“And say you storm in. What then?” Her eyes narrowed. “I may not have as many run-ins with the supernatural as you do, but I’ve seen my share of vampire thralls. And you running in the front door will only get them to kill more people faster.”
I glanced over her shoulder into the window. No smoke and screams. Yet. Damn it, what the hell was I supposed to do? My gut told me to run interference as fast as possible.
Maybe that was my problem? I always go for the quick fix—try to run damage control, get in and out as soon as possible, especially when the stakes go up. Maybe Nadya was right, maybe this needed a little more finesse . . . or maybe I was just giving them the chance to kill everyone left in the museum. I’d feel real swell about that. I glanced at the reflection and back to Nadya, her arms crossed and mouth set in a hard line. She wasn’t budging.
And she was right. We were supposed to be working as a team. If I didn’t trust her judgment, then I might as well put her on a plane back to Tokyo.
“OK, we do it your way,” I said. “What do you have in mind?”
She relaxed, like a weight was lifted off her shoulders. “The first thing we need to do is get people out. We’ll trigger the fire alarm. Marie’s thralls won’t care, but it will get everyone else clear.”
“After that?”
She shook her head. “Hope Rynn gets here before they find us?”
“That’s your plan? Pull the fire alarm and hope they don’t get their hands on us?”
“I didn’t say it was perfect. We’ll adapt as things happen. We’ll go in separately. You through the back, me through the front. Less likely they know what I look like, especially without my red hair.” She pulled two Bluetooth earpieces out of her pocket. “Put this on—we’ll be able to keep in touch.”
I turned the earpiece over. Secure frequency, decent range. High-tech. “Where did you get these?”
“Rynn gave them to me before we left Tokyo. He thought you might do something stupid. Don’t frown, he thought you’d forget them in a drawer.”
I kept frowning. Figured.
We split up; me around the back with my hoodie pulled up over my head, and Nadya towards the front entrance, looking every bit the grad student with her long brown hair tied in a ponytail and her thick, black-rimmed glasses. I stalled at the corner of the building, pretending to tie my nonexistent shoelaces. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t shake the feeling things were going to go to hell in a handbasket, which made no sense. On a bad day I wouldn’t recognize Nadya.
She paid for her ticket and entered the museum with no hassle.
OK, my turn. I turned onto the nature path that wound around back. The brush on either side quickly thickened. I found a spot where it was dense enough to cover me, then ducked off the trail. As I approached the museum, I felt in my pocket for my UV flashlight and garlic water, just in case.
I hugged the wall until I found the heavy metal door all university buildings have. Bingo. The great thing about grad students is that they’re lazy as hell, even the archaeologists. Someone had wedged a stick into the door so it wouldn’t close completely, probably so they could go on a coffee break and get back in without having to go around to the front. I used the wedge to open it farther and peeked around the corner into a narrow hallway lit with blue floor LEDs. There was no one there, so I slipped through and eased the door shut.
The hallway ended in a pair of doors. The one to the right was ajar, fluorescent light ebbing out and a Top 40 music station playing in the background. I peeked in. A coffeepot burning coffee was housed in the corner of the closet-sized room, and two computer towers jerry-rigged together beside a thirty-two-inch monitor hummed away against the not-so-far wall, a plastic Guitar Hero guitar discarded on the desk under paperwork.
I’d stumbled into the grad student office.
It was the inventory list for the East India Company exhibit. I read through for the scrolls—they were on the second floor, cabinet five. I opened the file to see what kind of security they’d outfitted and breathed a sigh of relief. Level one glass cases with basic system rigged alarms. Nowhere near the security measures they’d normally put in place for supernatural or magic items. They had no idea what was sitting under their noses. Good—made my job a lot easier . . . There was a set of notes entered by the grad student in charge of the display, Mike Krascheck . . . now, why did that sound familiar?
“Who the hell are you?”
I recognized that voice. That’s why the name sounded familiar. I spun around to find Mike standing in the doorway. He was wearing a yellow biohazard T-shirt covered in coffee stains and a pair of worn brown cords that sat just below a developing beer gut—think Shaggy from Scooby-Doo ten years after the Scooby snacks catch up.
Mike’s angry indignation at finding someone snooping on his computer morphed into shock, then more anger as he recognized me. Mike and I had met a few times at conferences a few years back. He was one of Benji’s buddies.
His face went bright red. I think there were more broken blood vessels along his nose than there had been a few years back. “I don’t know what you want, Hiboux, but you can get the fuck right out of my office. Now,” he said.
I crossed my arms and slid my left hand inside my jacket, where I kept the bottle of chloroform and cotton. “Hi Mike, nice to see you too. What have I been up to, you ask? Not much since the department threw me under the bus, you know, just trying to make ends meet, keep myself out of trouble. What about you? I see you’re working hard on the beer gut.”
He sniffed. “Don’t throw your sob story at me. You knew what would happen, same thing that happens to all of us when we don’t stick with the program.”